Health Tip: Four Types of Patients Should Avoid Seafood
Information from medical departments indicates that recently, there has been an increasing trend of patients developing gout and gastrointestinal diseases such as diarrhea due to improper consumption of seafood.
Compared to meat, seafood is high in protein and low in fat, delicious without being greasy. However, nutrition experts point out that while seafood is beneficial, it is not suitable for everyone, and one must be cautious when consuming it.
Four Types of Patients Should Avoid Seafood
Hyperuricemia and Gout
Gout has been known as the "disease of kings" because this "affliction of the rich" often favored royal families in the past and showed a tendency to occur within families.
There are many causes of gout, and long-term excessive intake of purine-rich seafood and meat is one of the main causes. Purines are mainly produced from the metabolic breakdown of nucleic acids in the nuclei of food cells. The metabolic product of purines in the human body is uric acid. Excessive intake of purines or reduced excretion is the direct cause of elevated uric acid levels in the body. Long-term hyperuricemia can easily lead to the formation of gout tophi.
Ge Sheng, Director of the Nutrition Department at the Sixth People's Hospital Affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, pointed out that controlling the intake of purines in the diet is key to preventing elevated blood uric acid. Purine content is relatively high in animal foods, while it is lower in milk and eggs. Therefore, patients with hyperuricemia can moderately increase their intake of milk and eggs, but must reduce the intake of seafood such as fish, shrimp, and shellfish, as well as livestock and poultry meat.
Diabetes
Insulin is the only hormone in the human body that can lower blood sugar. Type 2 diabetic patients have two conditions: insufficient insulin secretion and insulin resistance, which makes it difficult to lower blood sugar to normal levels. Therefore, diabetics need to comprehensively control their total calorie intake in their diet to reduce the burden on the pancreas.
Director Ge Sheng said that many patients understand the dietary treatment of diabetes as simply controlling staple foods high in carbohydrates, without restricting protein-rich foods like fish, shrimp, soy products, and livestock/poultry meat, believing that these foods have little impact on blood sugar. Some even use seafood and other non-vegetarian dishes to replace staple foods. In fact, this approach is extremely detrimental to blood sugar control. Because the three major nutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates—can be converted into each other in the body. Even if you don't eat a single grain of rice, consuming large amounts of fish, shrimp, lean meat, soy products, etc., the gluconeogenic amino acids in the protein will be converted into glucose, making blood sugar difficult to control.
The amount of seafood a diabetic patient should eat each time varies from person to person. It should be consumed reasonably under the guidance of a nutritionist or doctor to help control blood sugar while preventing obesity and malnutrition.
Renal Insufficiency
Renal insufficiency leads to a decreased filtration capacity of the glomeruli, causing nitrogenous metabolic waste to accumulate in the body, which further damages kidney function. Therefore, patients with renal insufficiency must adhere to a low-protein diet in their daily lives to reduce protein intake and alleviate the burden on the kidneys.
Director Ge Sheng pointed out that patients with renal insufficiency should strictly calculate the protein content in their diet. The daily protein intake should be strictly controlled, with an appropriate amount of around 30 to 45 grams per day. High-protein foods such as eggs, soy products, livestock/poultry meat, and fish, shrimp, and shellfish must be strictly controlled.
Cirrhosis with Coagulation Disorders
In patients with cirrhosis, the liver's ability to synthesize albumin decreases, and varying degrees of malnutrition are prone to occur. To prevent malnutrition and promote the repair of liver cells, patients need to pay attention to a high-protein diet and moderately limit fat intake.
During an episode of cirrhosis, a patient's coagulation function will be impaired, manifested by prolonged bleeding and clotting times and a tendency to bleed. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the intake of foods with anticoagulant effects in the diet, such as black fungus, fish, and shrimp. This is because seafood, especially deep-sea fish and shrimp, contains long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids like EPA, which can be metabolized in the body into prostaglandin PG3, an anticoagulant. Therefore, Eskimos who eat a lot of fish tend to have a tendency to bleed easily.
Three Dietary Habits to Avoid
Eating Seafood While Drinking Beer
On a hot summer day, seafood with beer seems like a natural pairing, and many people enjoy it. However, when shrimp, crab, and other seafood are metabolized in the human body, they form uric acid. Consuming large amounts of seafood while drinking beer will accelerate the formation of uric acid in the body. Excess uric acid can easily lead to diseases such as gout and kidney stones.
Eating Raw Seafood
The bacteria carried by seafood are mainly Vibrio parahaemolyticus, which has strong heat resistance, so eating semi-cooked cold seafood is not good for your health. In addition, seafood may also contain parasite eggs and bacterial contamination from processing. Generally, seafood needs to be boiled in boiling water for 4 to 5 minutes to be thoroughly sterilized.
Therefore, be cautious when eating seafood that cannot be cooked, such as drunken crab, drunken shrimp, and cold-cut conch. When eating raw fish slices, ensure the fish is hygienic and fresh.
Eating Fruit After Seafood
After a seafood feast, a plate of fruit has become a common sight on the dining table. However, fish, shrimp, crab, and other seafood are rich in nutrients like protein and calcium, while fruits contain more tannic acid. Eating fruit immediately after seafood not only affects the body's absorption of protein, but the calcium in the seafood can also easily combine with the tannic acid in the fruit to form insoluble calcium, which irritates the gastrointestinal tract and can even cause symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.
In addition, tea also contains tannic acid. Drinking tea before or after eating seafood increases the chance of calcium and tannic acid binding. Therefore, it's best not to drink tea when eating seafood either.